IV

The disheveled “heel-tapper” danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice: “It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss fey⁠—fey, I tell you! Look!” She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and even as the light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow and⁠—was not.

“Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!” shouted Disko, jumping aft. “Drunk or sober, we’ve got to help ’em. Heave short and break her out! Smart!”

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they moved away. This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little We’re Here complained like a human. They ran down to where Abishai’s craft had vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing more. “Let ’em go,” said Disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up. “I wouldn’t hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run clear under. Must ha’ been spewin’ her oakum fer a week, an’ they never thought to pump her. That’s one more boat gone along o’ leavin’ port all hands drunk.”

“Glory be!” said Long Jack. “We’d ha’ been obliged to help ’em if they was top o’ water.”

“ ’Thinkin’ o’ that myself,” said Tom Platt.

“Fey! Fey!” said the cook, rolling his eyes. “He haas taken his own luck with him.”

“Ver’ good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see. Eh, wha‑at?” said Manuel. “If you runna that way before the ’wind, and she work open her